Happy Holidays from the Swenson's!
We hope you are all (near or far) having a great holiday season. We sure are. We had some encouraging news this week. Andy's surgery last November to fuse his back didn't actually work, and we were anxiously anticipating the inevitability of another surgery soon. But he had a CT scan done this week which revealed some bone growth taking place. It's not where it's supposed to be, and it's only a little bit, but it's a start. The surgeon he saw here in Utah explained that sometimes the body's immune system fights off the growth hormone for up to a year or so, and that delays the fusion process. So we are cautiously hopeful that the original surgery will work eventually after all. We just have to wait and see.
This Christmas time I'm thinking about all the wonderful things our family did for us last year when we were unemployed and far away. We had a very special Christmas thanks to your generosity.
We went to cut down a Christmas tree today and were rudely reminded of the differences between Utah Christmases and those in Wisconsin. First of all, it was fifty degrees and sunny out. My kids went in T-shirts! (Ian and Avery and I went shopping for Christmas ornaments a week ago. We spent a pleasant hour in the store, gathering our decorations and talking about Santa and Christmas carols and presents. We made our purchases and carried our sacks to the door - and were greeted by a blast of warm air. I feel like we're celebrating in Texas or something.) So of course there was no snow on which to slide the tree once we cut it down - and no need for a thermos of yummy hot chocolate. And then there were the sad specimens casually referred to as 'trees'. There was a lovely selection of overgrown bushes with long needles and double trunks, or sad, straggly things with more trunk than needles. Those were the expensive ones! We just left, defeated. We'll drag ourselves to a tree lot and buy someone else's handiwork...
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Monday, November 24, 2008
FROM CAROLYN
Obedience Training I was talking to our daughter-in-law on the phone the other day and she happened to mention that our nearly 2-year-old granddaughter was in trouble in time-out. It sent a dagger straight to my heart. It’s not that I don’t trust them as parents, it’s just that a grandchild is too young to be in “trouble,” no matter how old they get. We had a great discussion about discipline and then I told her never to tell me that my grandchildren are in trouble. Rather say, they are in training. The irony is that my own children were constantly in trouble. Like when the 3 Musketeers, consisting of our 3-year-old daughter and 1 ½ year old twin boys emptied the refrigerator and I caught them skating through pickle juice and mustard…forget the training. They were in trouble. Or when I caught the ringleader, red-handed, trying to stuff her twin brothers in the dryer. Time-out wasn’t the training I was looking for. Or when the 12 and 9-year-olds tied their younger brother to the chain-link fence and pantsed him. We lived near a busy highway. They weren’t in trouble because they didn’t tell me about it until years later. But Grandparent Hindsight makes you dotty. That’s why we should never raise our own grandkids. I am so happy for somebody else to do the “training” that I told our new son-in-law he was like getting a dog from the Pound. All you have to do is love them because somebody else has already done the training, and you can’t be blamed (or congratulated) for the outcome. Obedience training for dogs is very similar for young children. It requires patience and consistency. If you get mad, it confuses them, and they wet on the carpet anyway. But if you keep at it in the beginning, it will pay off later, and then they will squirt catsup all over the living room rug anyway. I still haven’t thought of an enforceable logical consequence for that one. You could threaten completely out of your head, as my dad did once when we older girls did not change the baby’s poopy diaper for an entire day while my parents were out of town. “Ok girls, now you’ll have to mess your pants instead of using the toilet!” We kept giggling, wondering how he was going to enforce it. It was impossible, even for him, to keep a stoic face after that one. You know, I’ll bet it was somebody’s grandchildren who made a game of bonking their senile great-grandfather on the head and then running for cover in a squeal of laughter. He must have been senile, or instead of swearing up a blue streak, he would have smiled when their dad caught them and pleaded, “Whatever you do, don’t get them in trouble.”
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Sunday, November 2, 2008
GOAT BREATH
From Carolyn
In our late 40’s, and by way of a challenge from our 20-something son, my husband and I have begun a weight loss-weight training program. In all fairness, I am really the only one who is a beginner with the weights. Our weight equipment is on the back porch and our back yard is an animal pen where we have two delightful milk goats. They are very curious, social creatures and so whenever you’re out there pumping weights, sucking air, and concentrating on not collapsing, the goats like to see what you’re doing. During one long inhale, the goat poked her curious head through the rails, and belched right in my husband’s face.
How can I describe goat breath? Let’s just say that it compares favorably with someone who has coffee, cigarette, and whiskey breath, with no dental hygiene, combined with a hint of half-digested hay. Picture the scene from My Fair Lady, where Eliza’s father is trying to extort money from Professor Higgins. He laughs breathily in the professor’s face and nearly knocks him over. So it was with my husband. He said it reminded him of when he would lift weights with his older brother and right at the apex of straining, when vomiting was imminent, he would describe a greasy hamburger.
Our 16-year-old daughter, Natalie, who is milking and then selling the milk to earn money for expensive school activities, says that she is a perfect target for goat pee and goat shi...limey diarrhea. She swears that the goat who doesn’t like to be milked, smears her on purpose. And still there is something endearing about the little beggars. Like the one who lays her head in our daughters lap while she’s milking the other goat, just to be in on the action, or the way they come running when you shake the grain bucket.
I love to experiment with recipes for the milk, but getting it from the teat to the kitchen is strictly the kid’s job. And I try not to think about goat teats. Still the fresh milk and yogurt are delightful and convenient…in the sense that I don’t have to do any of the extracting. I hear all these stories second-hand because I made it very clear that the goats were a work project for the kids. I will only milk them if there is no other person left on planet earth. The 14-year-old takes after her mother. She has managed to keep her room sparkling clean upon threat of having to milk the goats. She also doesn’t earn money for a clean room.
I’ll bet Arnold Swartzenegger never got buff while sucking in goat breath. My husband is still the best.
In our late 40’s, and by way of a challenge from our 20-something son, my husband and I have begun a weight loss-weight training program. In all fairness, I am really the only one who is a beginner with the weights. Our weight equipment is on the back porch and our back yard is an animal pen where we have two delightful milk goats. They are very curious, social creatures and so whenever you’re out there pumping weights, sucking air, and concentrating on not collapsing, the goats like to see what you’re doing. During one long inhale, the goat poked her curious head through the rails, and belched right in my husband’s face.
How can I describe goat breath? Let’s just say that it compares favorably with someone who has coffee, cigarette, and whiskey breath, with no dental hygiene, combined with a hint of half-digested hay. Picture the scene from My Fair Lady, where Eliza’s father is trying to extort money from Professor Higgins. He laughs breathily in the professor’s face and nearly knocks him over. So it was with my husband. He said it reminded him of when he would lift weights with his older brother and right at the apex of straining, when vomiting was imminent, he would describe a greasy hamburger.
Our 16-year-old daughter, Natalie, who is milking and then selling the milk to earn money for expensive school activities, says that she is a perfect target for goat pee and goat shi...limey diarrhea. She swears that the goat who doesn’t like to be milked, smears her on purpose. And still there is something endearing about the little beggars. Like the one who lays her head in our daughters lap while she’s milking the other goat, just to be in on the action, or the way they come running when you shake the grain bucket.
I love to experiment with recipes for the milk, but getting it from the teat to the kitchen is strictly the kid’s job. And I try not to think about goat teats. Still the fresh milk and yogurt are delightful and convenient…in the sense that I don’t have to do any of the extracting. I hear all these stories second-hand because I made it very clear that the goats were a work project for the kids. I will only milk them if there is no other person left on planet earth. The 14-year-old takes after her mother. She has managed to keep her room sparkling clean upon threat of having to milk the goats. She also doesn’t earn money for a clean room.
I’ll bet Arnold Swartzenegger never got buff while sucking in goat breath. My husband is still the best.
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